India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has released a circular to airlines, as well as the Airports Authority of India (AAI), to deal with fake Global Positioning System (GPS) signals.
Key points
- These signals overpower a flight’s own navigation system and divert it from its intended path.
- As per media reports, several weeks ago, a significant number of corporate and commercial aircraft were diverted off course due to fake GPS signals over Middle Eastern airspace.
- The circular is based on recommendations of the committee for tackling the emerging threat considering the best practices, latest developments, and International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) guidance on the matter.
- The reason behind these incidents is attributed to a phenomenon called ‘GPS spoofing’.
- According to the US Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics, GPS spoofing is “the surreptitious replacement of a true satellite signal that can cause a GPS receiver to output an erroneous position and time”.
- In other words, GPS spoofing is an attack aimed at overriding a GPS-enabled device’s original location. To do so, the attacker uses a radio transmitter that broadcasts fake GPS signals and interferes with GPS receivers nearby. As a result, those devices display fake GPS locations.
